Bouvard and Pecuchet

By Gustave Flaubert

Book Overview

Although unfinished during his lifetime, Bouvard and P cuchet is now considered one of Flaubert's greatest masterpieces.

In Flaubert's own words, the novel is "a kind of encyclopedia made into farce . . . A book in which I shall spit out my bile." At the center of this book are Bouvard and P cuchet, two retired clerks who set out in a search for truth and knowledge with persistent optimism in light of the fact that each new attempt at learning about the world ends in disaster.

In the literary tradition of Rabelais, Cervantes, and Swift, this story is told in that blend of satire and sympathy that only genius can compound, and the reader becomes genuinely fond of these two Don Quixotes of Ideas. This new translation also includes Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1564783936
• ISBN13: 9781564783936
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 8.1"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher